Palermo - Day 6 Part 1

We wanted to get to the mother of all churches today - Monreale Cathedral. It's a little ways out of town and because it’s Sunday we had to work around the hours of mass.

Yes, we’re going to church on Sunday!

We had to catch the bus at noon so we started the day with a quick tour of Theater Massimo.

We found a good breeze to keep us cool while we waited for the tour to start.

This Opera House is the 3rd largest in Europe (Paris 1st, Vienna 2nd) and takes up a whole block. 

Inside the frescoes in the ceiling open up to release warm air. The seats themselves and the shape they’re built in as well as the wood they’re made from all contribute to great acoustics.

Then we headed to the Palermo Cathedral to get a visit in before going to Monreale but they wouldn’t let us in due to mass. So we went to scope out the bus situation and realized we’d missed our chance - We had hours to kill before the next one. 

We ended up having lunch at this great little place called Ristorante de Galleria. The owner and staff were so lovely and the food was great.

OK now on to our trip to Monreale Cathedral and beautiful views of Palermo.

The church was pretty grand.

(This photo is from the website because we never got a good pic of the outside)

The interior is covered with golden mosaics. Over 2 tons of gold is on the walls. All the mosaics tell different bible stories. When we were looking at the one about Noah’s Ark Mike made up a song that Noah would’ve sang - Something about, “come on all you animals we got to get on board and get outta here!” 

Hilarious!